Andy Barr tells the story of working with Al Franken on the path from comedian to Senator--from the formation of Team Franken, the research operation behind 2003's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, through driving a tank on a USO tour, through election night 2008... and a very long night it was.

Christine Roque, activist and journalist from the Philippines, describes her experience of the SMS-fueled 2001 uprising that bloodlessly overthrew the government--as a 15-year-old. Plus, the fascinating back story of a journalist massacre.

Billy Wimsatt, aka Upski, is a behind-the-scenes, and sometimes in-front-of-the-scenes, force in national progressive politics--but he was a force to be reckoned with long before he started thinking about political power. On a special Flaming Sword of Justice, hear Billy's backstory--how he went from writing the book Bomb the Suburbs to write Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs without changing his underlying commitment to justice.

Sam McLean and Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman tell how they helped GetUp!, Australia's online advocacy group, end a national government's 11-year regime, bring home a Guantanamo prisoner, and transform their national politics forever.

Holden Karnofsky of GiveWell.org tells the story of his attempt to rewrite the rules for how $200+ billion a year in philanthropy is given away -- from a side project of some hedge-fund young guns, to a dream in a cockroach-ridden closet of an apartment in the East Village, to a reality moving millions of dollars a year to save lives.

The back stories of two unlikely activists, both of whom have changed the world through the power of information--but are in certain key respects dissimilar: Bradley Manning and Roger Ailes. Our guests: Chase Madar, author of The Passion of Bradley Manning, and Ari Rabin-Havt, author of The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network Into a Propaganda Machine.

John Raskin beats the West Side Stadium; Aaron Swartz tells the surprising story of zoning and urban sprawl; and Ben Wikler tells how he got started in activism fighting a Coca-Cola deal in local schools.

Three awesome Brooklynites: Irin Carmon, freshly returned to Brooklyn from Guatemala, spoke talk about what it looks like at the other end of the US deportation system; Amanda Marcotte guided us through the real politics and realpolitik of Obama, contraception, and the religious right; and Justin Krebs revealed the premise and promise of Drinking Liberally, which promotes democracy one pint at a time.